Arguably Steven Spielberg’s last “really good” film, Minority Report – the futuristic Hitchcockian action-suspense flick – raised questions on the morality of arresting people for crimes they have yet to have committed. Sure, the moralizing was simplistic, but Spielberg did yeoman’s work in aping Sir Alfred in varying degrees, be it the who-dun-it plot or the slick camera angles of the memorable eye-change scene.
But set your opticals on this, Christopher Hitchens believes the Nobel committee has been bestowed with the telekinetic powers of Spielberg and Cruise, awarding Barack Obama the Nobel prize for things he has yet to accomplish.
In this roseate conception, we have Barack Obama as Tom Cruise, praised and promoted for nipping crime in the bud by arresting people before they actually commit any offense. (A whole new slogan on which to run: “Tough on pre-crime”!)
Perhaps. But the Nobel has little to do with peace and more about international relativistic worldview. American exceptionalism is the bane of their existence.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the choice of ex-president Jimmy Carter for the peace prize in 2002 was accompanied by statements from Oslo that said outright that he was being rewarded for his opposition to the foreign policy of an elected sitting president of the United States. (On that basis, Carter could have been given the prize for writing to Arab heads of state in 1991, urging them not to join the coalition against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait: an act of lawless annexation that involved the actual obliteration of a member state of the United Nations and the Arab League. Again, I find it difficult to imagine a Republican ex-president being honored in such a way for publicly undermining one of his successors.)
Hitchens tries to imagine such an honor bestowed upon a Republican. He can keep imagining. The last 20 years, an already hyper-political award has become more a stick to beat at conservative foreign policy than actually promote peace. If there were any justice in the world, the award would have been given to an American soldier annually the last 60 years. Instead it’s handed to Mr. Habitat for Humanity, unless that humanity is Kuwaiti and the question of peace is their habitat. Carter’s record did little to showcase peace but piece – a piece of Afghanistan here, some American hostages here, a piece of Iran here – and he became the poster child of Nobel eligibility and presidential stupidity.
But unlike the European intellectual contingent, good intentions have consequences and it’s often a road better off untraveled. Some lessons for our Dear president.
So, don’t tempt fate by accepting a prize for a race you haven’t yet entered, let alone won. Maybe, like Roman potentates of old, Obama should engage a servant who whispers to him on a regular basis to remember that he, too, is mortal. (Rahm Emanuel strikes me as the near-perfect servitor for that essential everyday job.) Meanwhile, just as he must already regret crossing the seas to try and hustle an Olympic deal for his adopted hometown, the president may live to wish that he didn’t go all the way to Stockholm to accept the unearned adulation of what Saul Bellow once called the Good Intentions Paving Company.
Which Mr. Obama surely believes, in the words of AC/DC, is not a bad place to be.
Obama – “I just cured cancer!”
The Right – “Typical messianic complex, because we know cancer was overrated anyway. It was never that serious to begin with. We were already close to a cure and you just stumbled into it.”
Except for the cancer part, that was pretty close. How about “I just pissed off England for the 65-th time!” Or my favorite: “We’re going to keep unemployment at 8-percent with $800 billion, though we could give every unemployed person in the country $75,000 for that!” Or, “We just found an extra $2 trillion for the deficit that wasn’t projected!” Lest we forget: “How do you spell reset?” Or, the never forgettable “I’m not going to raise taxes on the middle class – except for cap and trade, and health care …” Even Keynes believed raising taxes during a recession was a disaster waiting to happen.
Then there is George W. Bush’s case: “I just freed 25 million people and kept us safe for eight years!” and the subsequent: “Idiot, dolt, warmonger, racist, you never do anything right, but hey, lets keep 95-percent of your strategy and call it hope-n-change while simultaneously blaming all the worlds woes on you and shun allies because it looks great to dictators and the likes of the Nobel committee!”
If your bone of contention is due credit and excessive name-calling, that’s a long walk off a short pier.
That should read, “I said I was going to cure cancer!”
the Left- “He cured cancer!”
Actually, it should read “I’m gonna spend the next 4 years and trilions of dollars making it look like we are going to someday cure cancer, but all I’m gonna actually do is talk and talk and talk and talk…”
Tracy, I sent you an email. Did you get it?
Dang, BarryO, recycling old Bush-era “jokes,” but just switchin’ the Oval Office roles. We know you’re serious, but still, that desperate, eh?
‘Obamacare’ should make him a shoe-in for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, regardless of whether or not it comes to be.
If Barry had any class at all he’d give the award back but humility in this man child is seriously lacking. And Barry O..go check out the word hubris and its meaning…then do the history of the word…you will find Obamawan’s picture next to it.
Personally I was disappointed with “Minority Report.”
It took me a couple forced viewings on HBO to like it. That said, it isn’t Spielberg’s best work, but I would call it the equivalent of Curt Schilling’s 2007 playoffs – the last gasp so to speak.
I found it disappointing too, Bot. The first 45 minutes or so are pure brilliance, with some of the best chase scenes in any recent film.
Then it got way off-track with some bizarre and/or gross-out scenes involving mutant plants and crazy German plastic surgeons.
Then there’s the nonsensical “twist” involving Cruise’s predestined murder. How exactly does paying a guy to sit in a hotel with pictures of Cruise’s dead son set off an inevitable chain of events that causes Cruise to track him down and accidentally kill him? Contrived much?
And that ending. Sheesh. The ultimate in bleeding-heart logic. So the three psychics got to go live peacefully in a cabin somewhere. Too bad about all the people that will get murdered as the price for their comfort. Did anyone stop to ask the psychics if they might volunteer to keep saving lives instead of looking out for their own selfish wishes?
I’m not one to complain about a movie deviating wildly from the book – I mean, hell, Blade Runner has very little in common with “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” – but making the heart of the story a kidnapped, brutally killed child is something that I think PKD himself would have been deeply unhappy with.
The last 20 years, an already hyper-political award has become more a stick to beat at conservative foreign policy than actually promote peace.
Well, according to liberals, the most important (and perhaps only) way to promote peace in the world is by destroying conservatives and their policies.
So when you think about it, according to the liberals’ goofy logic, Obama is promoting peace simply by existing and getting people to vote for him.
And they say that, until the plane hits the tower and they need a conservative to run in and carry their ass out.